Welcome to the Nindie Spotlight, your one-stop-shop for gaming opinions, previews, and reviews for anything Nintendo, but focused first on independent games and developers!

Monday, March 27, 2017

Review: Has-Been Heroes

Sometimes
it is interesting how your perceptions of things can change from the
first time you watch something being played to actually playing it,
and this can work both in the positive and negative directions. I
remember back when Nintendo did the Treehouse presentation of
Has-Been Heroes I was completely indifferent to it. I saw the lanes,
the slow creeping of doom of oncoming enemies, what looked like some
nifty animations, and what seemed to be a constant pausing of the
gameplay. It felt slow, I couldn't really get an appreciation for it
in that format or time, and I couldn't get any real sense of what was
going on at all. MEH!

As
the weeks have gone by and I read more I began to get a little more
interested with each tidbit of insight. The fact that the development
team seemed to be very inspired by The Binding of Isaac. The fact
that it is a rogue-like game in its design but that I don't otherwise
recognize the gameplay as something I've encountered before. The fact
that it made no bones about bringing the pain and challenge to its
players. What was at one point a mild indifference was quickly
turning into a moderate interest.

Fast
forward to now and through a gracious opportunity on the part of the
developer I was provided a review copy of the game to check out.
Since I was given the game Friday I've sunk a solid 20 hours into the
game. Yeah, I've gotten into it... just a bit. What I'm here to tell
you is that this isn't a game for all gamers. It is unlikely to be
mainstream-friendly because, on top of it being a rogue-like, there
is no getting around the fact that it is difficult. With a nudge of
help from a promised Day 1 patch hopefully this will become something
that even challenge-lovers won't need to throw their controllers
across the room about, but I don't think this is a game trying to be
for everyone. But that doesn't need to be a bad thing, it makes the
game better for the people who will want to dig in, get engaged, and
have a long-term game they can continue to go back to for quite some
time. My kind of game.

What
has continued to suck me in with this game is that even 20 hours
later I'm still feeling like I'm learning how to play it more
effectively. Aside from the base mechanics that do take some getting
used to (hopefully they'll be easier to learn with the day 1 tool
tips or user guides like the one I've made in order to help), there's
also the interactions of elements and how you can combine their
effects for massive AOE damage if you set the table properly. Then
there's the fact that you can get more mileage out of your spells by
investing them in the right character with the right slot bonus. Then
there's the moments where you'll experiment with multiple spells and
buffs to super-charge a strategic attack that decimates your enemies.
However, no matter how hard you then throw yourself at the feet of
the RNG gods and pray for mercy they can be fickle and cruel one
moment, and then throw you a bone another. It is the nature of the
beast and it has me hooked.

For
an old arcade game lover the basic nature of how games like this work
is old hat. You put your quarter in and sometimes you completely kick
ass but most of the time you die. I can live with that, I understand
that. If you do as well, this game may be for you. Where it gets
interesting is that while there have been a ton of rogue-likes in the
shooter genre, this game is very much its own thing. While on the
surface the attacks look cool and it can feel somewhat like an action
game below it all, make no mistake, this game is all about strategy.
You must take the hand you're dealt and often work that collection of
odds and ends into something you can do some real damage with. As you
unlock new potential spells and items from your many unsuccessful
runs the number of ways you can really put a hurt on will greatly
improve. While I would have been a little happier if you'd had an
option to invest in boosting some of your heroes' base stats to make
the repeated runs a little less painful when you get the right
combinations of some of these powerful spells it can be tough to
complain.

At
the end of the day in terms of scoring this game a number of items on
the normal checklist can be put aside. The graphics, sound and
control are between good and great, none of them is in the way. While
the controls can seem a bit unusual at first once you're used to them
they're actually intuitive and generally work well. Since you'll have
a tendency to pause almost constantly the good thing is that they
shouldn't interfere much with your ability to be precise. While I've
seen/heard a legitimate concern with the graphical variety of enemies
(many of them are ultimately variations on a skeleton of some sort,
though they'll have different markings or colors to indicate what
sort of enhancements they may have) I'm someone who is happy that
rather than investing in more graphical variety the investment was in
providing so many unique variants that affect how the game plays from
run to run. At some point the looks fade into the background, you're
laser-focused on how to use what's in front of you, and you fight to
make it work. The music is appropriate and mildly hum-able while the
sound effects of various attacks help convey the level of damage
you're doing nicely.

Now
with the formalities out of the way we'll get to what's most
important. Why you should or shouldn't buy the game. Assuming the Day
1 patch helps make the game less sadistically wild in its mood swings
of difficulty from challenge to challenge I'd generally say that at
this price it is well worth checking out, and I'd say if you like
strategy games in any way and you appreciate a challenge it may even
be a steal of a value at half the price of Isaac. While this title
and Isaac are very different games in terms of genre their appeal is
very similar, and since this experience is much more new to me it
actually has a far greater hold on my attention now. This is
something I haven't beat yet, something I'm still working out the
nuances of, and it is constantly trying to tell me I'm not good
enough. Maybe I'm just a “kick me while I'm down and I'll still get
up” kind of guy but the best compliment I can pay Has-Been Heroes
is that it scratches an itch I never even knew I had, and I don't
come along games like that often enough. Depending on where you are
on the challenge-loving scale will likely determine where you'll
stand, individual results will likely vary.

Score:
8.5

Pros:

The
further you get, the more you unlock, and the more there continues
to be to learn and to experiment with

I
know of no other game out there that's quite like this. Add in the
fact that I tend to love rogue-likes to begin with and that's a very
interesting combination

The
level of planning and preparation, followed by the execution, of a
ton of deep and inventive gameplay mechanics are clearly on display
here. This game is an obvious labor of love by an ambitious and
talented team

Cons:

At
the end of the day, by its nature, I think this game is a love or
hate prospect with limited room in between. That's where the price
point really helps out a lot to encourage people to give it a chance

Pre
Day 1 patch, and I'm somewhat assuming this will help to greatly
balance out the game without making it too easy, the pendulum of
difficulty in the game swings a bit too wide. At its worst the game
can move up from being crushingly hard to outright cruel. While this
happening once in a while can be dismissed as the RNG gods not
favoring you for the moment this happens more often than not and it
takes just one bad battle to end your current run